[Dialogue] Native American Education

[KarenBueno@aol.com]

January 3, 2005

Sunny Walker, Oliveann Slotta and I met with Roger (I didn’t learn his last 
name) of CERT today to hear his vision for Native American Education, and his 
hope that the ICA could help make it a reality.

Roger’s grandmother and grandfather both ran away from the Indian boarding 
schools which were run in their times; an often cruel separation of children 
from their parents in an attempt to force them into the white culture.  Roger now 
lives in Denver and has his children in a charter school.  His passion is 
education, and his vision is that great education be available for all Native 
American children and youth.

There are some 560 different tribes in the United States, each with its own 
heritage and culture and mythology and, usually, language.  A comprehensive 
vision would be to gather elders and youth of any one tribe and create a vision 
for all aspects of education for their group.  Then the enactment of that 
vision could be enabled through a charter school structure.  The visioning process 
could be led by ICA-trained facilitators, and could be drawn up as an 
educational model.

As a pilot, this might begin in a Umatilla tribe in eastern Oregon, near 
Pendleton.  There is a group in Phoenix who has been involved in charter school 
management who might take part.

The project sounds huge, as large or larger than the town meeting campaign.  
The possibilities for impacting the Native American youth would be 
far-reaching.  Perhaps a university education program would help to sponsor such a 
project.

The meeting was to share Roger’s vision, and I’m passing it on to the ICA/OE 
dialog for your reflections.

Karen Bueno
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